The unanimous acclaim from pundits and public alike that greeted Guillaume Tourniaire’s conducting of Opera Australia’s new production of Eugene Onegin in Sydney and Melbourne should have surprised no-one who has been keeping up with developments in Australia’s burgeoning opera scene over recent years.
Since first arriving down under in 2006 at the invitation of Melbourne-based Melba Recordings, Tourniaire has been eloquently establishing a reputation for himself as a conductor with the ability to wield a baton like a magic wand.
To date, he has cast his spell over three of the country’s symphony and opera orchestras, its national opera company and its pre-eminent record label; powerful partnerships all that together are providing Australia with the very real prospect of turning talent into triumph.
Maria Vandamme, founder and producer of Melba Recordings – with whom Tourniaire has released five internationally acclaimed discs featuring Australia’s finest musicians and significant world premieres– describes the conductor simply and succinctly as “a sovereign musician; he has a rare knack of keeping everyone in the orchestra happy without ever compromising standards”.
Vandamme encountered him first in Europe at a concert by the Orchestre National de Lyon and, she recalls, “after watching him conduct for 10 minutes, I knew I wanted to work with him. He was brilliant, methodical and had perfect technique. And it was clear I wasn’t the only one struck by him; the orchestra and audience were just as completely caught up with what he was doing”.
Australian audiences didn’t have to wait for long to judge Tourniaire for themselves. Vandamme quickly brought him home with her to make recordings that have garnered praise and profile around the globe.
The collaboration began with two inexplicably forgotten masterpieces by Saint-Saëns – his Trojan War opera, Hélène, written for Nellie Melba, and the orchestral version of the ravishing song cycle Nuit persane – and continued with other world premieres – ballet music by Saint-Saëns; symphonic poems for voice and orchestra by Vierne and Chausson; a celebration of Mozart, with clarinettist Paul Dean and the venerable arts patron Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, and Cheryl Barker’s moving tribute to Dame Joan Hammond, ‘Pure Diva’.
Those discs featured, in turn, Orchestra Victoria, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and some of the finest soloists and singers Australia currently has to offer. And those at the sharpest end of a conductor’s baton – the orchestral musicians – responded to Tourniaire wholeheartedly.
Jill Atkinson, one of the hardiest of Australia’s orchestral musicians, having served as principal harpist with the Queensland Orchestra for four decades, unabashedly declares herself “an ardent fan of Guillaume Tourniaire’s genius; his attention to detail is without peer and his ear is the most accurate I have ever come across”.
And she’s not alone, she adds, in her appreciation: “Every orchestra he conducts he manages to turn into something so special with his careful treatment of the players and the music”.
Atkinson’s acclaim is echoed by Orchestra Victoria’s Principal Oboist Stephen Robinson who hails Tourniaire as “truly inspiring and like all great conductors he both challenges and inspires the orchestra to achieve an extraordinary response”. And Orchestra Victoria violinist Philip Nixon pithily offered that “Guillaume is the perfect conductor: he has everything”.
Former orchestral trombonist and now Melba Recordings Artist and Repertoire Manager Ian Perry has seen Tourniaire at work in front of the podium and behind the microphone. In both arenas, he says, the Maestro proved himself “a beacon for uncompromising artistic endeavour. He possesses a rare combination of skills: brilliance, a depth of scholarship, rigour, and an ability to get the type of performance that orchestral players and singers live for. Orchestral musicians love to work hard – and Guillaume inspires that. In 20 years of orchestral playing, I consider Guillaume to be superior to 90% of the star conductors invited to conduct in Australia”.
In a different court – that ruled by critics – and in different jurisdictions – here at home, in Europe and in Asia – the charismatic Tourniaire has provoked similar enthusiasm and approval. If it hasn’t been said before, it deserves to be said now: Guillaume Tourniaire is a star in the making. It surely can’t be long before he is leading one of the world’s great orchestras.
Which makes his fast-growing profile in Australia, championed by its foremost record label, opera company and orchestras alike, all the more a cause for celebration and not a little pride, trumpeted (or should that be chorused) loudly by his colleagues.
The conductor is both lynchpin and lubricant of any successful opera company. Says former Opera Australia artistic administrator Ian McCahon, “I think it is Guillaume’s outstanding and insightful musicianship, combined with his ability to engage, in the most enthusiastic way, players and singers, that makes him such a popular conductor with audiences and all artists with whom he works.
The heroes in the world of opera have changed over time. In the so called golden age the defining stars were the singers, the Melbas and Carusos. This was followed by the reign of the Conductor- it was Solti’s Ring, Karajan’s Fidelio, or Kleiber’s – anything. We are now in the era of the Director, though the most powerful German Opera Director and Intendant of his time, August Everding, joked that the mantle had been passed from the Director to the Lighting Designer.
Orchestral musicians are famously dismissive of conductors and the candid opinions players express of even celebrity Maestros would shock audiences who believe the spin of marketing departments desperate to present their conductors as Godlike. Says Maria Vandamme: “After a Vienna Philharmonic performance at the Salzburg Festival, the conversation among the VPO’s musicians turned to conductors. The five leading conductors of our age were cheerfully dismissed; only Kleiber escaped the indifference of the players; they are a hard bunch to impress. So for a conductor to be resoundingly loved and respected, as is Tourniaire, is not only rare, it is a feat.”
And there is much for Australian audiences to be grateful for. He follows Eugene Onegin with another two productions for Opera Australia this season – a Donizetti double-bill: The Elixir of Love in Sydney in August and Don Pasquale in Melbourne in November and December – and two more again next year.
Also in the pipeline are a number of first-time recordings of unduly neglected music from the same era of 19th-century French romanticism that Tourniaire has distinguished himself in with Melba (an all the more tantalising prospect given the as yet unknown outcome of arts funding in next week’s Budget announcement).
But for now, the bond between Tourniaire and Australia – pithily but pointedly described by Maria Vandamme as “a mutual love affair” – is strong and solid. And that’s a relationship, surely, to cherish.
Guillaume Tourniaire conducts Opera Australia’s The Elixir of Love at the Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House August 11-27 and Don Pasquale at the Arts Centre Melbourne, Nov 19-Dec 3 (www.opera.org.au). His recordings are available at www.melbarecordings.com.au
